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The European Commission has said for the first time that it is considering a delay of a year to Europe’s overhauled trading rulebook, after its top markets regulator raised concerns over the time needed to put the rules into practice.

Esma's Steven Maijoor

The comments came at a scrutiny hearing for the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, or Mifid II, held by the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, known as Econ, in Brussels on November 10.

Mifid II, which covers nearly every aspect of how financial markets operate in Europe, is scheduled to take effect from January 3, 2017, but Steven Maijoor, the chairman of the European Securities and Markets Authority, said in his opening remarks to the committee that there were areas where “already the calendar is unfeasible”.

He added that Esma had sent a submission to the Commission, which is currently scrutinising the draft standards for Mifid II released by Esma at the end of September, regarding the possible need for a delay.

A spokesman for the Commission, speaking shortly after Maijoor, said: “Our preliminary view at a technical level is indeed that a delay is needed if we want to have a smooth and effective implementation."

The spokesman added: "We will need to discuss among ourselves what the scope and duration of that delay should be. Our preliminary view is that the safest and most legally sound approach is that we should delay the whole package by one year.”

The comments drew an angry response from MEPs, with Markus Ferber, the vice-chairman of Econ and the rapporteur for Mifid II, saying: “You’re not making me very happy here, gentlemen. We are talking about delivering on the duties taken up in 2009 at the G20 by the member states. We will end up going down in history as the area of the world that took the longest to implement them.”

Anneliese Dodds, an English MEP, added: “This cannot be viewed as an opportunity by the huge number of lobbyists that we speak with to reopen some of those issues, and as a window of opportunity for further amendments.”

Maijoor said that he was “unhappy” that he was forced to raise the issue with Econ, but that the technology issues associated with implementation of Mifid II were acute enough to have to do so, and that the situation represented “a reality that we’re confronted with”. He added that Esma had realised the need for a delay around one month ago.

The Commission spokesman said he wanted to emphasise that “nobody wants to reopen Mifid II”. But, he added, striking a balance in terms of the duration of any delay was critical.

He said: “I think we have to avoid being too short, and too long. If we are too short, we take the risk, notably for technical IT reasons, of delaying a second time, which would be a disaster. But if we are too long then there is a risk of losing the momentum and having people not focused any more on the task in hand, be it in national authorities or in the industry.”

This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Anneliese Dodds's name and Fabio De Masi's status as an MEP for Germany not Italy